


How To Drown In Style

by Zayrastriel



Series: The Drowning 'verse [5]
Category: Actor RPF
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:11:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, Jared never saw his future as being reduced to zombies, the Blue Mountains (NSW Australia), vaguely crushing on a girl some twenty three years younger than him (in his defence, all the other girls ended up zombie-fied or dead months ago), and living vicarious friendships via a satellite phone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Drown In Style

_Currently, Jared is in the Blue Mountains, Australia, hiding out from zombies with a twenty-something year old artist and armed only with a satellite phone, a smuggled gun, and a lifetime’s supply of potato crisps, ice cream, Vegemite and thank any fucking God that might actually exist, alcohol._  

It’s a sentence he never thought he’d have to think (not that he ever thought to not think it, or something).  Especially the Vegemite part, because Vegemite doesn’t even feature in Jared’s worst nightmares because there’s only so much one can do to oneself in the way of cruelty.

It doesn’t start out like that, of course.

Most things sort of don’t.

 

 

~~~~~

He actually has no idea how it starts; because he has no fucking idea how the fuck he ends up in the Blue Mountains.  There’s a vague memory of a hotel room, Kings Cross, and the rest of his ba-

 _Oh_.

_Fuckers._

In any case, he wakes up with an exploding head on a freezing tin can and some ridiculously cheerful bitch talking about _Zig-Zag_ at what is, according to his watch, 8 in the morning.  And clichés about Australia are so (not) hilariously incorrect; because a stop later he’s being pushed out of the train and onto a barren platform by a sour-faced guy with an orange vest that clashes disgustingly with his complexion, and it is like liquid _ice_ outside.  If this is the start of winter – June, right, that’s the start of some season and if this isn’t winter he doesn’t want to know what winter is – then he’s glad as hell that

Someone’s taken Jared’s phone, and left a handful of loose change in his pocket. 

Fucking _brilliant_.

 

~~~~~

 

They first start talking while in line for some glass elevator thing, after Jared’s been informed that, much to his surprise, this place is actually considered a tourist attraction as opposed to the death trap that any place with this amount of trees just always ends up being.

There are a hell of a lot of trees here.

And none of them are _blue_.  The chick at the information office tried to explain it to him but gave up and just handed him some weird Australian equivalent of aspirin. 

In any case, Jared figures that he might as well stick around, catch the train home by himself like a big boy, and then sue the hell out of whoever got him stuck here.

 

~~~~~

 

She (he doesn’t catch her name, but the hangover hasn’t even started to go away and so he figures he can just get her to write it down later) is like the only person here who actually recognises him.  Jared would find that depressing but then it’s their turn in the elevator and he catches sight of his reflection.

(Not that bloodshot eyes and straw for hair is especially radical for him, but still.)

In any case, _she_ turns out to be a Chinese-born, skinny, short, twenty two year old artist-type – not in the same way Jared is, with songs and commercialisation he’s been trying to avoid but has been sucked into all the same, but an actual artist.  Like, sketchpad and everything, and it’s apparently why she’s here.  At some point, she attempts to explain her degree to him.  He tries to understand, but like the information chick, she gives up (though with oodles more grace).

She’s also a fan of his; he can tell, no matter how hard she tries to hide it, but he doesn’t call her out on it because he appreciates the effort.

Also because, for lack of anything better to do he’s been tagging along with her for the last four hours and that would be the most awkward end to an acquaintance-ship he’s had to deal with.

(Total lie.  He’s been more awkward.  Right now though, he’s got what’s apparently $10 in his pocket, enough for the train, and she’s offered to buy him lunch.)

It’s at lunch, in an overpriced café-thing, that it _happens_.

(Also probably not true.  It’s when they find _out_ what happened.  _It_ probably started happening a long time ago.)

(He’s so up for blaming it on climate change.)

 

~~~~~

 

There’s not much Jared likes to think about in the next few months leading into summer, into Christmas celebrated with a rapidly diminishing number of people (they started with close to a hundred, of those who didn’t refuse to believe the news that anyone with internet could confirm, and they’re down to around fifteen).

The things that he does, he holds treasured in his head.  They’ve got their own room in the palace that he’d like to think is his mind.

As follows:

  1. Her name is Fiona.
  2. So he totally should have invested in a satellite phone (though considering his _sonsofbitchesbandmates_ stole everything in his pockets, well, fuck that) but she does, and so at least he knows that at least some of his friends are holding out
  3. Just because she’s young, doesn’t mean she’s less mature than Jared is
  4. Actually, she’s about a hundred times more.  Also, she can rock climb like something awesome, though the first time they were running from zombies up a cliff face sans harness, she kept saying something about sticking to colours and laughing hysterically.  Given the situation, he didn’t press the point.
  5. Vegemite tastes alright in small doses, sort of like medicine only not
  6. Oil prices don’t matter during apocalypses
  7. Which is good because between the 100-15 of them there are actually cars, and zombies are scared of cars driven by vengeful maniacs
  8. He was a fuckwit for smuggling a gun into the country but he’d be dead if he hadn’t
  9. Alcohol is _good_.
  10. He’s alive.



The list of things he doesn’t want to think about starts with the fact that the rest of his band is almost definitely dead.  Since the list gets worse from there in, he doesn’t think about it.

 

~~~~

 

So Fiona can drive, and it turns out that inland-side of the Mountains (he refuses to call them blue because they’re _not_ ) hasn’t been zombie-fied yet.

They stay the night, Jared gets totally wasted, and they arrive back with a car full of cheese, bread, apples, and wine; to find out that twelve of their fifty three took their last bus and went down to –

Well, that’s the thing.  No one actually knows.

Jared’s theory is that it’s some sort of mass suicide.

He doesn’t say it because Fiona told him last week that she had sort of a thing for the guy (twenty seven, architecture student) whose idea it was.

 

~~~~~

 

Jared tries to kiss Fiona once, after imbuing enough of not-unalcoholic drink to make him think it’s a good idea.

She turns her head, looks at him with a sort of resigned amusement-pity-confusion thing going on, and calmly says something about age.

It is the _awkward_ to end all _awkwards_.

Later, he blames it on the alcohol,.  She accepts the excuse, and they both continue in the mutual understanding that he was lying though his teeth.

~~~~~

_Hi everyone,_

_Eurgh okay I have no idea what to say, seriously, see Raine this is why you should have done this instead of me.  (Btw yeah Raine and Ara are still alive too, see, we be awesome.)_

_What I want to say, I guess, is that we’re alive.  Also in the Netherlands, but whatever.  You’re obviously alive.  The human race is still happening, peeps._

_Get back to me if you can xx and till then, wood, cold, dark and fire._

_That’s how we’re going to totally win this war.  Apocalypse.  Whatever._

_More coming later, but till then,_

_< 3, Lia._

Fiona shows the text to Jared wordlessly.

He reads it, but doesn’t realise till he gets to the end and looks up to see her eyes suspiciously watery that it’s the first message she’s gotten from anyone she knows.

 _Awesome, your friends haven’t been torn to pieces_ feels too sardonic and bitter, _I’m glad for you_ is just not him, and _stop crying_ sounds like a line from the _Douchebag’s Book of Douchebagness_.

Jared sticks with “please don’t tell me you have a friend named after the weather.”

She scoffs, rolls her eyes, launches into an explanation, and he sits back, content in the understanding that they’re all good.

 

~~~~~

 

When he walks into Fiona’s room (which would have sounded and felt fucking creepy nine months ago before the world became a B-grade movie) she’s on speakerphone, talking in between mouthfuls of crackers and Vegemite.

Jared still doesn’t understand who the fuck invented Vegemite, and _why_.

He’s about to say _hello_ when someone unfamiliar on the other side of the phone starts talking; figuring they’d hear him if he said anything, he taps Fiona on the shoulder to warn her he’s there (in case it’s something sacred and feminine that they’re talking about).

When he actually tunes into the conversation to hear “ _OMFG, Jared fucking_ Leto _?_ ” he wishes he _had_ said something.

Fiona shrugs helplessly at him as someone else on the other end says “ _calm, Lia, caaaalm_.”  This voice, he knows; Raine, the poor girl cursed with dyslexic parents (Fiona gives him _looks_ when he insists on calling her that but it’s so true, he can’t just not acknowledge it.)

 _Lia_ , he hasn’t talked to yet, but he’s heard enough about her.

Enough to make him wonder just what _Tom fucking Hiddleston_ would think if he was listening in.

“ _You know, Lia, if I didn’t know better, I’d be quite offended_ ,” a terribly familiar voice says dryly over the sound of a door opening.

Okay, so now he does know.

Not that Jared cares what fucking _Loki_ thinks of him.

(But he loved those movies.)

 _Your friends are crazy_ , he mouths exaggeratedly to Fiona, who mouths back with even more gusto, _I know, right?_ over the sounds of quiet conversation between Hiddleston

“ _But seriously, Fio, nice work_ ,” ‘Lia’ continues, as though Fiona cursed him to get dumped on a train with no phone and the mother of all hangovers.  “ _Oh my god, Ara, Fio is with_ Jared fucking Leto _!_ ”

“ _It’s nice to be back alive too, Lia,_ ” and Fiona hasn’t been kidding about the emptiness in that voice.  “ _Hi Fio, and I’d totally react with outrage or something but.  Um.  Someone remind me who Jared Leto is?_ ”

 _“…Tom.  Deal with her.  I can’t even – just. Nope.  No comment_.”

“Oh my god, Lia,” Fiona says with amusement (but Jared can detect the slightest hint of annoyance in her tone), “it’s not like we’re, you know, _together_.”

“ _What_ ,” is Lia’s response, as Raine shouts “ _good, Fio, resist the temptation to hook up with old people.  Resiiiiiist_.”

He is actually a lot more offended than that than he should be, considering he is more than twenty years older than Fiona.  Raine, poor child that she is, actually has a good point.

 Nevertheless, Jared can’t help but feel a little vindicated when Lia makes a disbelieving noise; a feeling that doesn’t linger when she says, “ _dude, Snape/Hermione.  And Phantom/Christine.  Twenty years is nothing, and he looks like perpetually twenty seven anyway.  It could totally work._ ”

“You know,” and he can accept the age jibe, though he’d like to think he looks more distinguished and generally talented than he was when he was twenty seven.  But the fact that the two comparisons offered up are to, respectively, a douchebag and a murdering douchebag, is too much for him, “for the record, I am _much_ better looking than either of them.”

 

 There is a long, awkward silence.

“ _…So you were there the whole time_.”

“Yep,” Fiona answers for him.

There is another even longer awkward silence.

“ _…Wow_ ,” ‘Ara’ says slowly, “ _I actually missed pretty much the majority of this conversation and so have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but if_ Lia’s _looking awkward then something must have gone down_.”

Fiona shoots him a panicked glance but Jared shrugs.  He’s said all he actually wanted to say.

“Right.  Um.  _So_ …” Fiona finally says in what is obviously an attempt to initiate a rather unsubtle subject change, “have you heard from anyone else?”

“ _Not really,_ ” Raine sighs heavily.

“ _Though Alice has been getting in touch_ ,” Ara interjects, before adding, “ _anyway, I’m off to clean my gear, see you guys at dinner_.”

By _gear_ , Jared doesn’t think Ara’s referring to rock climbing equipment.

Jared frowns.  “Isn’t Alice your friend in Antarctica?” and there are groans from both sides of the conversation.

“ _Dude, trust_ Alice _to go to fricking_ Antarctica _during a zombie apocalypse of zombies that don’t like the cold_ ,” Raine sighs.

Jared wants to meet _Alice_.  She sounds like the most sane of them all.

 

~~~~~

 

It’s when they’re in the car, eleven months after it all started (he’s driving, without a license but something tells him no one’s checking) that Fiona’s phone rings.  That’s not unusual in itself; he assumes it’s one of the Dutch trio, or the girl in New York who managed to tap into Dianna Agron’s bi-side (pity he’s not there to see that, it sounds fucking hot).

What is unusual is that she doesn’t answer immediately, just stares at the phone, confusion written all over her features.

Jared pulls over quickly, checking that all the doors are locked before leaning over.

 _Unknown Number_ , the screen reads, and his eyes flick away from the phone to meet hers.

He tilts his head questioningly, and Fiona shrugs.

 _Might as well_ , the gesture reads, and she presses the speakerphone button.

“Hello?” she says cautiously.

“ _Fiona?  Sorry, is this Fiona Li_?”

The voice is crackly, something that’s never happened before; that was meant to be the special thing about satellite phones.

 _Maybe there’s a passing asteroid, or the moon isn’t in balance, or someone has a sore throat_ , he reasons, trying to push aside the sudden rise of _wrongness_ in his blood.

“Um…yes?” Fiona replies.

There’s a sigh of relief that sounds more like a burst of white noise than anything.  “ _Awesome.  Um.  This is Alice.  Alice with a y.  Um, I don’t know if you remember me, we met at Ara’s 18 th birthday party? Sorry, I just had your number and it was the only one that worked_.”

A slight frown crosses Fiona’s face but clears quickly.  “Alyce!  How are you?  _Where_ are you?” she amends quickly, and they’re learning that that’s the important question now.

“ _Sydney_.”

There’s something off in that tone, still full of static, raspy and hoarse.

“Wow,” Fiona says.  “I’m impressed.  How did you survive?”

Slightly tactless but they’re both on edge now because _that isn’t static_.

“ _Survive_?”

“Yeah, the zombies.”

“ _Oh_.”

Jared closes his eyes briefly.  _It’s not possible_ , he thinks, opening his eyes to glance across at Fiona.  _It’s not possible_ , he tries to reassure her with his gaze but it is.

“ _Um.  Yeah.  I didn’t_ ,” Alyce replies, a tone of dark humour tinging a voice emerging from what Jared knows (after that memorable occasion being elbows-deep in a dead zombie) is a dried-out, cracked trachea.  “ _Actually, I, um, well you see, I sort of am one._ ”

**TBC**


End file.
